Playing' Pretend
by sctwilightvampwolfgal
Summary: Kagura had never really been much for playing pretend. *A belated Christmas gift poem to a really good friend of mine.*


**Merry Christmas, Abby, and Happy New Year! Sorry, that this is so late, but I hope that the wait ends up being well worth it. The line breaks exist, because the site tends to hate my stanzas in poetry whenever I write stanzaed poems. I hope that you had a very Blessed Christmas and a very Blessed New Year, and that the start of the year is going well for you so far! I'm super excited for Fantasy And Sci-Fi! I hope that Christmas and New Year were all the you'd hoped that they'd be. I hope that this year just keeps on getting better and better for you! (I'm hoping for an inspiring semester this time around, and maybe we'll both end up getting just that, hopefully.) I hope that you like this even though it ended up becoming more poetry than prose once the idea finally came to just how to write your (second-ish) gift out. So hopefully, I wrote out a poem that you'll really enjoy and that will make you very happy and be such a blessing to you this new year. (It's been way too long since I've written for Fruits Basket!) Kagura really is a deep or rather more in depth character (though everyone in Fruits Basket is so in depth too) and so I hope that I managed to convey more of what's beneath the surface with her. I hope that you end up loving this gift even though it's a bit later than I'd planned on writing it out and gifting it to you.**

Beneath the outer shell

lies a woman,

Not bitter,

but alive

* * *

Her heart may seem too tiny

in a body so small,

but it was full to bursting,

bursting at the seams

with a love so stubbornly strong,

that it ached to let go,

* * *

It's hard to see sometimes,

how wide her smile is

before the always too familiar fall, the drop of her heart in her chest,

She just loved him,

from childhood on.

* * *

Love can't be bunched up in a solid, time slot,

accounted for, before it could even be measured out,

Who measures love anyway?

when it drips and pours and gets lost somewhere in the middle of the memories

* * *

Kagura loves with all of her,

perhaps that's why so many seem almost frightened of the tiny girl

with a heart filled to bursting

* * *

Can't they see that her love stretches beyond what others may see?  
She loves him,

she has since they were kids

and she found something within who he was,

that she refused to let go of

* * *

Memories stack and stack and stack on top of each other,

and she can recall several,

and yet the amount of time couldn't determine love nor extinguish it,

but still she remembered

* * *

A heart broken-is still a heart,

even if it bends and twists and snaps,

so Kagura smiles,

but doesn't forget what the coals over her heart feel like,

when she realizes that he only really shines when 'she''s with him,

and not, when Kagura tells him through all of her,

whether aggressions bite or her words ring soft,

that she loves him.

* * *

She doesn't hate Tohru,

never could really,

even as her heart snaps under the weight

as if old puppet strings broke and snapped,

dropping her once almost weightless heart down

what had to be several stories

* * *

She's never been much of a pretender,

though she'd always felt age-old hope,

and even looking up,

she doesn't miss how Tohru lights up around Kyo,

how Kyo lights up around Tohru,

how Momiji lights up around Tohru too,

and she knows heartache tastes deceivingly sweet and yet so, so bitter.

* * *

Love is gentle, sweet, persistent, kind,

but sometimes Kagura almost swears that it's a jealous thing beating in her heart,

even when she doesn't compare herself to Tohru too much,

even when she knows that love can't be bent or controlled by time,

even if it's only one sided,

even if it's half forgotten,

even if it's mutual,

just as Tohru's smile somehow lights Kyo's own up,

a smile that Kagura could never cause,

not with how sweet and soft, it's become

Kyo loves her,

and Tohru, she, loves him

* * *

Kagura smiles even though it hurts,

even though she isn't alone,

isn't the only one left smiling with a broken heart,

frail things could still beat,

smiles could sting and some could hiss,

and Kagura didn't have the energy to pretend that Momiji didn't share her pain,

equal but still so different

Kagura had never been much of a pretender after all.


End file.
